Minamo "Nyamo" Kurosawa (Japanese: 黒沢 みなもKurosawa Minamo), (にゃも Nyamo), normally called Kurosawa-sensei by her students, is a fictional character from the anime and manga series Azumanga Daioh. She is the gym teacher of Ayumu, Koyomi, Tomo, Chiyo, Sakaki, and Kagura, the six main protagonists of the anime.

Contents

Biography

Minamo is the gym teacher at the girls' school. In the girls' first year of high school, she is the homeroom teacher of Class 5, which Kagura is in initially. During their last two years, she is the homeroom teacher of Class 2. Minamo is a high school friend and rival of Yukari Tanizaki; Yukari relentlessly insults and freeloads from Nyamo, but Nyamo gets her digs in, too. One area which Yukari is very sensitive about is that Nyamo is so well-liked by her class and receives birthday presents from them twice,[1] while Yukari's class, Class 3, forget about Yukari's birthday during their two last years of high school and Yukari makes no attempt to hide her envy (the reason they forgot about it was because Yukari's birthday was during the summer vacation). She went into Nyamo's classroom, and enviously yelled that she wouldn't want a handbag anyway since she had no use for it. When Class 3 finally gave Yukari a birthday present, she shouted "You want me to go and deliver this to Nyamo!?", suggesting that they would rather give Nyamo a birthday present than Yukari – an example of the two teachers' endless rivalry

"Nyamo" is a nickname from Kurosawa's student days, but Yukari calls her that, and so does Tomo Takino. Other students call her Kurosawa-sensei, but later on, most of them start calling her Nyamo as well (though they still use the more polite "Nyamo-sensei" instead of Tomo's extremely impolite "Nyamo-chan"). Whereas Yukari appears to be an older version of Tomo, Nyamo resembles Yomi (more in personality than looks) and the two teachers' odd relationship is similar to the one that Tomo and Yomi share. Popular with the students, Nyamo is nicer, less obnoxious, and far more in control than Yukari. Yukari often teases her about her past romantic relationships and that she is a "stupid P.E. teacher". During one of the summer trips the girls take together, Nyamo gets very drunk (usually, Yukari is prone to this behaviour; as a matter of fact, Nyamo drank specifically to keep the alcohol away from Yukari) and tells the girls all about the birds and the bees, which embarrasses Sakaki and confuses Chiyo, but impresses the other girls.[2]

In addition to teaching her homeroom class and P.E., Nyamo is the coach/advisor of the women's swim team. Kagura calls her "Coach" and holds her in very high regard. The fact that students tend to come to her with their problems is yet another source of Yukari's jealousy, as well as the fact that she is generally more "together" and better-disciplined.

Unlike Yukari, Nyamo is able to maintain an apartment of her own. She also owns and drives a blue Toyota Vitz 5-door. She is very sensitive to comments about her love life, which has evidently provided Yukari with an endless supply of blackmail material and points at which to rib her. One of these apparently involves a "love letter" from high school, which Yukari loves to dangle over her head.[3] Still, she is quite devoted to teaching and at one point turns down a job offer that would have given her far greater income and prestige (this only happened in the anime).[4]

Trivia

The summer before the Class 3 students started high school, she was, according to Yukari, in a relationship with someone unknown.[6]

While it may be unintentional, Nyamo seems to bear a striking resemblance to Ayumi Shinozaki from the Corpse Party series, not only in looks, but the fact they are both people who uphold the rules as much as possible, but are willing and able to cross that line if they feel it is necessary. Nyamo demonstrates this when she gets drunk and shares inappropriate stories, only to prevent Yukari from doing the same.